


Miharu Rokujou

by RavioliRed



Category: Nabari no Ou
Genre: Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Gen, extended PLANT metaphors, looking back, nabari15, this is literally just me rambling nonsensically about my forever fav
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 13:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19086304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavioliRed/pseuds/RavioliRed
Summary: You wonder where it all began, really. If you were to look back at the twisted vine that is your life, where would you find the root?





	Miharu Rokujou

**Author's Note:**

> So this is for the 15th birthday event for the series. Yay! Nabari's always had a piece of my heart, and Miharu especially. The prompt for today was favorite character, so I had to do something with him! Hope you enjoy <3 (Might add some edits later, but I wanted to post something to kick my perfectionism in the butt. So there!)

You wonder where it all began, really. If you were to look back at the twisted vine that is your life, where would you find the root?  
Your first thought is the Fairy. She did, after all, grant you life, even if at the cost of your mom’s, and of so many others. You are a seed sown in cracked and rotten earth. You could understand why your mother didn’t want you, or anyone else, to remember what happened all those years ago, and you are grateful for the protection that anonymity granted you. But you know now that the heaviest memories are often also the ones with the most love, and that that alone makes them worth holding on to. Decay fertilizes the soil, after all: an end and a beginning, a tragedy and a triumph.  


After the root, you wonder where you found your first leaves, when you first poked your head above soil. You think of Kouichi, as he strong-armed you into joining the nindo club, and you think of Reimei in all of her determination to meet you and watch over you. These were and are your first real friends, you realize. Before, when apathy clouded everything, you hadn’t seen the point in investing in any kind of relationship: you didn’t want to make an obligation that you lacked the energy to fulfil. But these friendships were never about obligation, really, just trust and love and understanding, even when your paths diverged. Sometimes your friends can give you the energy to face another day, a reason to keep pushing on and learning more and taking care of yourself, even if you really don’t feel like it and kind of don’t see the point. Friends, you decide, are kind of like sunlight. You might need time away from them sometimes, but they can help ease you out of the dark soil and into the day.  


And of course Tobari-sensei, too, was there at the beginning, willing to defend and defend and defend you from the dangers he’d refused to fully explain. You wonder what it was like, carrying all those old memories, alone. Plant that you are, you never saw many of the threats he defended you from, pests and beasts determined to end you. You may not agree with his methods, and you don’t regret leaving Banten for the Kairoshu, but you are glad he gave you a chance to learn to defend yourself, a place to begin coming into your own. He fenced you in, and it both protected and contained you: better now that you are free from it, and he from having to keep it up.  


Some plants only flower under dangerous conditions, and you suppose that if you are one of these, then Yoite was as well. He had also been a part of the danger and fear, but you find it hard to hold against him, as you always have. Perhaps it’s because you know that he, too, was suffering from a fate he could not escape. Perhaps it has something to do with the way you grew intertwined, for a while. As you raced to find how to save him (how to end him), you only held the other closer, finally feeling, as the end began, like you understood what it was to care, to love, to hold on, to _want_ to hold on even when it didn’t make sense to. It was then, perhaps, that you figured out that life didn’t make sense and neither did you, and that maybe none of the best or worst things in life ever did, even as they gave you purpose. When all you had left of Yoite was the shape of the emptiness beside you, you would clutch at the memory of such a purpose, and find it slightly more tangible than his shadow. You don’t know what kind of loss and pain Yoite went through in his life, only that you found an echo of yourself in him, and he in you, and that was it, really. You grow on today, but you will always hold his shape entwined in yours, and remember.  


Then Yukimi was there, thrusting a camera into your hands just for something to do, and holding you up where you fell. You know he was (is) hurting, too: you’d like to think you hold him up too, even just a bit. Yes, if you were a vine, Yukimi offered a scaffold when you lost track of where you were supposed to go from here. The others that were still there helped too, of course, but Yukimi knew where to build, to remember the past for what it was but not to dwell, to look first up where you wished to go. You know you’ve grown tall since you first showed the world your face, and you know you would have stagnated long ago were it not for him.  
Today, you find yourself bearing fruit, shiny with good health, surrounded by friends close enough to be family and memories of those gone from the world, but loved all the same. You think about how easily the word comes to you now— _love_.  
The past never stopped weighing on you, no. But you’ve found plenty of reasons to smile, still. You know you’ll keep growing, and blooming, and sharing the fruit of your life, all for a long while yet.


End file.
